


Thedas in Parallel - a Dragon Age A/U

by PheadreofWynter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragon Age II Quest - Demands of the Qun, Gen, Hawke & Varric Tethras Friendship, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Qunari, The Qun (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 21:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18432857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PheadreofWynter/pseuds/PheadreofWynter
Summary: An A/U where Hawk leaves Kirkwall with the Arishok and his men in Isabela's place.  Any additional scenes will be posted as they come to me, which I hate to tell you is not generally in a linear fashion.





	Thedas in Parallel - a Dragon Age A/U

**Author's Note:**

> End of Act 2, Demands of the Qun.

By the time we finally reached the ornate double doors barring the audience hall, my breath was sawing through my lungs.  Reflexively I made a last check to ensure everyone who should be dead actually was.  Then I relaxed and let my shoulders curl inward.  My whole upper body crumpled, sucking in air. 

                “Storm the building, great idea,” huffed a flat, annoyed voice. It was Aveline.  _Of course,_ it was Aveline.  Because right now, in the middle of a war zone behind the enemy lines and about ten feet from the general was the _perfect_ time for infighting.  _I guess all clichés had to come from somewhere,_ I thought _._ A far-away bit of me was watching events and feeling mild envy.  Aveline’s copper hair somehow made her so much better at authoritative disapproval than me.  Or maybe it was the breadth of her shoulders in plate mail...  Judging from that observation I was a bit more in shock then I could afford.  Fainting in front of the Arishok was not an option. 

“Seat-of-the-pants plans are always rough around the edges,” I bit out, trying to lock my mind back onto the task at hand.  _You’ll have time for shock later._   _Right **now,** summon all the mana you can hold, catch your breath, and then get your ass in gear.  People are dying.  If you don’t get this under control **soon** it’s going to be YOUR people dying.  _Part of me wished I had just taken my people and high-tailed it at the first sign disaster was about the best outcome we could hope for.  But the only one who could have lived with themselves for running had already done so. “I am going to take care of it Aveline.  Have I let you down when it mattered before?  I’m not the instigator here.”

                “This time anyway!”  The chipper voice was an insult to the huffing and puffing of the rest of us.  It was so badly timed anyone not used to Merrill would be sure it was meant to incite further confrontation.  Brittle silence descended as Varric, Aveline, and I looked at each other.  A giggle forced its way from my throat, earning me a dirty look.  Merrill always felt our laughter was at her expense and nothing we said would sway her.  Varric and Aveline’s faces cracked into grins that were equal parts exasperation and affection.  Her unintended trampling of my defense was exactly what we needed. 

“What?  You have to admit there are a lot of occasions when one of us actually _caused_ the emergency.”  She was so indignant, so matter-of-fact.  Aveline lifted her hands in a show of surrender.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Merrill the eternal straight man.  Now,” Varric said, collecting our wandering attention.  “There has just been a loud increase in screaming back there… perhaps we could move along?”

                “What an excellent idea,” I replied and pulled my arms back.  I swept them forward again in one fluid motion and wind blasted past us.  The force of it slammed the heavy wooden doors back on their hinges.  The four of us followed as if carried on it.  Theatrics seem like an overdone device of writers when it comes to battles.  In person though a good entrance can be an effective weapon.  Sets the right tone for all the parties involved; sets the scene.  Battles were often decided as much by psychology as power.  I armored myself with that as I stepped over the viscount’s severed head.  _Just when I was starting to kind of like the guy...  Too bad.  I really do hate decapitations,_ the detached part of me mused.  Aware that was the shock I’d noted before I ignored it.  My concentration was returning, albeit slower than I’d like.  

                “Panahadon Hawk.”  His voice sounded happier today than any other instance I could remember.  Oh good-y _.  Must be all the murder and mayhem_.  He left no pause for a witty riposte and continued, “I knew you would come.  You are the only one I have encountered in this disgusting place that has some understanding of honor.  I decided to test you to see if you are Basalit-An after all.”  His tone indicated he viewed this as bestowing a gift.  I debated whether it was in our best interest for me to say thanks.  I didn’t get the chance.  Several very large specimens had detached themselves from formation and started down the stairs towards us.  I confirmed by their insignia that these were members of his personal guard.  They were massive slabs of muscle stacked several feet above our heads armed with heavy, broad blades and experience born of near-continuous war.  Plus, you know, horns.

                Fighting is easier to manage than conversation anyway.  The currents of the battle took over my consciousness.  It felt like a reprieve.  I didn’t have to be clever or brave, I just had to kill people.  Regardless of the morality it was the thing I did best.  Fighting, when the opponent is good enough to give you a run for your money, is something I enjoy.  Bethany used to say it was unhealthy, but Carver had always understood.  It was one of the few things we had always shared.  Consciousness thought became an ebb and flow.  Flashes registered, but it was enough to keep me aware of everyone else’s movement.  A twang, a solid thunk, a bright flash, Varric.  Merrill’s vines a twisting, thorny nightmare of immobilizing coils.  They had to be dodged but then condensed into a thicket that kept the Qunari from getting close.  That was key.  Distance kept them from being able to take full advantage of their size.  Aveline beat one backwards, using her shield like a ram as well as protection.  Enough breathing space thus provided, I sought out my magic.  The air crackled and bit at my lungs as the temperature plunged.  Frost and small crystals advanced away from my feet as a cloak of winter answered my call. 

                “All right you hot-house flowers,” I said, and the tone matched the mocking smile on my mouth.  Taunting is another underrated technique, and today I planned to make use of every trick in my arsenal.  “Let’s see how you stack up against a little Fereldan winter!”  Qunari are most vulnerable to ice spells.  Probably had something to do with their race being from the tropics.

When the last of them fell dead I came back to myself.  The fight abated my shock just in time.  The Arishok’s feet sent tremors through the marble beneath me as he came down the staircase.  The sheer size of him was overwhelming.  So was the smell of large, sweaty male in an aggressive frame of mind.  It wasn’t unpleasant to someone who had basically spent their life in the company of warriors, but it really drove home the immediacy of his presence.  I had never been so close before, and never on a level surface.  Always with him on a dais or the top of a staircase.  Every time he looked huge, don’t get me wrong, but distance had insulated me.  I wondered if the others were feeling the effect so acutely.  _So you’re head barely reaches his chest and his thighs are as big as your waist, so what?  You can take him!_   As pep talks go, it left something to be desired.  It was enough to straighten my spine and capture his eyes again though.

                “You are indeed Basalit-An.  In that spirit I ask you to return the Tome that was stolen from my hand.”

                “I can’t do that.  I don’t have it.  As I said one of my _former,_ ” I stressed the word, “companions ran off with it.  Again, I would be happy to…”

                “No Hawk.  Too much time has passed.  We have endured all the hate and indignity we intend to.  The city shall be cleansed, and its’ people given purpose.  The dishonor must be expunged before I can return to Par Vollen.  If the Tome can not be found than the conquering of this city of festering blasphemy will the beginning of my atonement.”

                I took a deep breath, aware that time was running out.  The chance to avert disaster must not be squandered.  My mind kept trying to show me scenes of broken-bodied companions left after the Qunari army’s righteous anger had spent itself in this place.  I might have fallen to panic, but I no longer had enough energy for that active an emotion.  I wrestled with weeds of despair as I kept his gaze held to mine.  Then I heard a sultry voice.  It was as if Andraste herself had parted the clouds so her light could reach me.

“Sorry I’m late darlings.”

“Isabella!” I exclaimed, spinning around.

“You just wouldn’t believe the effort it took to get here.”  Under one arm she carried a massive book.  It looked like it had seen careless handling but was overall fully intact.

“Words just can’t express how glad I am to see you,” I told her.  It was true too.  With her arrival our odds of surviving this mess had improved.  Provided the Qunari would be willing to embrace the idea of bygones.  I hoped they were as eager to start home as I thought they were.  “I thought you would be half way to Ostwick by now.”

“I _was_ halfway to Ostwick when I turned around and came back.  I can’t imagine what got into me.  You’re a terrible influence you know.”  Her annoyance was not feigned, I could tell.

“You will return the Tome of Koslun!” bellowed the Arishok, impatient with our banter.

“Right, well, here’s your book,” Isabella said, gingerly handing it over.  She put an effort into trying to remain out of his reach while she did so.  Pointless, but who could blame her?   

“Now that the Relic of Koslun is reclaimed, we are free to return home,” the stony expression still managed to covey his satisfaction in this thought.  However, any relief evaporated with his next words, “ _With_ the thief.”

“Now wait a minute!”  It was Aveline.  She grabbed Isabella’s arm and yanked her a step or two backwards, edging her armor-plated self between him them.  “Isabella has committed a serious crime, yes, but she should remain here to face _our_ justice system.” 

His voice was hard when he answered, “I must take the thief to face judgment.  She will be given over to the re-educators and then spend the rest of her life in service to the glory of the Qun.” 

I was angry at Isabella.  She had not trusted that I would look out for her when we got the Tome.  She had put both the city and the Qunari in peril because of their enforced close quarters.  It was possible that this debacle could even restart war between our peoples.  Not to mention… in the corner of my mind I saw a flash of blue light framed by a dark doorway.   _Things in the vault should stay there,_ I told myself.  I had an inkling of what would happen if she was taken.  The things I had learned about “re-education” from Maraas did not bode well for my free-spirited friend.  I couldn’t abandon her, especially now.

My mind raced, to buy time I said “Arishok, will you confirm that since your property has been returned, if you are allowed to leave with the responsible party you will remove your army from this city without further damage to her people?” There were stifled sounds behind me, but it was all I could do to hold his eyes and attention. 

“It is agreed.  Though I think you will regret not taking the opportunity to bring order to your people when you had the chance.”  It seemed kindly meant.  Later back at the Hanged Man I was going to get _really_ drunk and we would all have a laugh about the blatant insanity of this conversation.

“Is there no other way to satisfy what your Qun demands?”

This caused a long, speculative look.  I saw his hands open and curl shut.  Felt an undeniable increase in the level of physical threat.  “There is one other,” his voice was threaded with an undercurrent of anticipation.  _Oh,_ I thought, _of course_.  I felt my eyes wander over him while my brain did a critical assessment.  He was bigger than me.  His _sword_ was bigger than me.  If I attached a rope swing to one of his biceps and hung on it all day, I’m not sure he’d notice.  He was fresh and his body restive for the battle his status had so far denied him.  Not so for me.  Usually I would not turn away from a fight.  Looking at the situation with a clinical eye I knew this time I couldn’t guarantee victory.  There was too much at stake here to risk it if I could find a different path.  I glanced back at my friends.  Varric had caught the implication and it left his face pale.  I smiled and offered a saucy wink.  _I love you all_ , I thought at them.  The answer had finally come, and it was not going to go over well.

“I offer you a third choice.  Why settle for her?  Why accept any risk of harm on the cusp of return home? Instead, you could return with a powerful, and expendable, resource for your people.  Someone sworn to the service of your office, voluntarily, until such time as the Arishok decides the debt incurred is fulfilled…  In other words, take me instead.”  I had no time to soothe the impact on those watching.

The intensity of our regard made the rest of the world fade. The silence between us crackled with communication passing into me and back to him with perfect clarity.  I felt the raw anticipation of a battle you were not sure you could win.  The urge to challenge oneself beyond the point of all reason.  Glory is a siren with long honey-gold hair, and we both lusted after her.  The contempt he felt for my people, for my foundational principles.  I understood the unclean anathema sickness of it, like a poison of the soul endured these long years.  I felt his grudging respect earned by deed, proven on fields of blood and bone.  What he learned of me in those moments I didn’t know.  The thoughts flowed faster.  On and on we formed a torrent of revelation.   _I am a wave and soon I will dash myself on the rocks, will be sundered by the strength of this connection._   The pitch was unsustainable. 

“She’s one of mine, you know it.  We are both soldiers and understand each player’s role when confronted with an enemy force.  I am her superior officer.  Her mistakes are my mistakes.  The stain to my honor is as if I had committed the crime myself.  When you command there is no hiding from the responsibility.  All the lives today on both sides, all the time you lost trapped in a city of infidels, the insults and lies you have endured.  I accept this debt.  She has no honor, no dedication to cleansing her spirit in service of your people or your creed.  Leave her here in this place you detest and let their notions of justice suffice as her punishment.  I will provide a value to your people you could never achieve from her after re-education.”  My voice was low but confident.  I could see the future as clear and complete as if it had been decided long ago.  He could see it to and was tempted.

 _When that moment comes,_ the gravel-throated voice of the Witch bloomed in memory, _do not hesitate to leap._   My eyes fluttered shut, opened again.  With a bone crushing effort I threw open every door within - every mental defense.  His scrutiny charred what it touched.  I held down a desperate urge to protect myself and smothered it.   Every warrior understands what it is to don the detached mantle of clarity and power that comes when you are willing to spend everything.  The face that means you no longer intend to come back.  I felt his acknowledgement.  If he chose to fight me now, I would not go down easy.  A promise that even if he was victorious in the end, he would know mortal fear before he earned it.  He could taste that fear a little bit already, couldn’t he, my eyes asked him.  In this moment, as our wills fought to change the shape the future would take, he could not conceal the truth of it.

I held his eyes captive, demanded he look and see the possibilities of having me sworn to his side.  Zealotry in my loyalty to him alone.  The Qun is the closest thing people can create of a hive-mind.  In the Qun there is no privacy.  In the Qun there is no weakness not considered blaspheme.  It was an offer to have one thing, one dangerous and powerful thing to count on with absolute confidence, one thing in the universe to call his alone.  I would craft the vow in my mind to him alone, and yet say aloud words which while scrupulously true, could be the subject of some debate in meaning.  No one would know, a secret between a Lord and his servant.  I might have been a desire demon so great was the temptation.  So great, and so mixed with self-loathing. The idea of breaking the taboo, at how _desperate_ he was to break it.  Impending judgement choked off my breath as I stood resolute.  _I think this is probably how I am going to feel at the end of the path when I return to the Maker_.  _I always figured it was going to suck out loud._  

“Enough blood has been spilled here today,” I murmured, “Let’s go now, together, and I vow that I shall have no other purpose than to obey the Children of the Qun.  Those you would defend I shall lay my life down for.  Those who call you enemy shall scream in the night for fear of the captive demoness your will can set against them.  Named by your own mouth Basalit An, I ask no permeant alterations are made to me as you do to your mages.  But I will clasp a collar on my neck myself, and heel to whomever holds my leash.  I swear it before all these witnesses of high standing in my culture.  I swear it on the souls of all those I love who lie cold in the ground.  If I fail you in this, may I know only agony and despair.  May all those who called me friend shun me.  May my name be forgotten by the history of man and the Maker banish me to wander in darkness far from his side.”  The words ran out.  The wave finally broke.

“Done,” his voice boomed in the curves of my ears and assaulted their drums.  It was the thunderous echo of a bargain struck, of chains clasping, of a cage door closing.  The tension, the power ran from me and my knees almost buckled.  Shaking, I dug my nails in my palms and forced my wobbly center of balance back in alignment.  I had won.  No matter what came next, I would have this victory to anchor myself.  But, as they say, there is no rest for the wicked.  I managed to turn toward my charging companions with something approaching normalcy.

“What have you done?”

“How dare you?  I didn’t ask for…”  Aveline and Isabella buffeted me from each side.  They slapped at my shoulders and shouted in each ear.  I could tell Merrill was hysterical from her high-pitched piping and the fact that everything she said was in Elvhan.  The commotion made me dizzy and I had to compensate with an ungraceful lurch to one side.

“Shut up, all of you,” Varric’s voice cut through me like a glass knife.  My eyes closed, an involuntary response to the pain it caused me, a mirror of his own.  They parted and he stood there, the fury and pain so great he seemed limned with fire.  I sank to one knee so that my head was below his.  I made myself an offering, a prayer for forgiveness.  He was my second, and he would feel the weight of the obligations I was about to lay down until the day he died.  The betrayal was the most complete for him, and any grace to be had was his alone to bestow.

“She would be better dead than what they would do to her.”  I said.

“I know it.”

“… I could not be sure I would win Varric.  Doubt at the outset is a very bad sign.  If we had fought a dozen less skirmishes, or maybe even only five, I would have risked it.”  I shot my eyes to Aveline’s face, “they could raze the city to the ground Aveline.  Sure, there would be retaliation and possible war, but even if this army is wiped out to a man it would be considered by all Qunari as an acceptable trade.  You don’t really understand the stakes here.  Their way of thinking is too different from ours.”

I brought my gaze back, “A city full of people, of people I have spent the last several years trying to help.  Not to mention that everyone I care about in the world is here,” I turned head-on into Merrill’s crumpling sorrow.  “I love you,” I told her simply.  The color drained out of her face.  “I love all of you,” I said, looking at the others in turn, pausing each time to fix their faces in my memory.  “My whole family died…  I hope you will forgive me but to have it happen again is a risk cannot accept.”  The fury in them banked down.  _This is the time to say goodbye._

“There is very little time.  I have requests, though I will understand if you won’t heed them.”  I reached out and grabbed one lapel of Varric’s brocade and velvet duster.  “Liquidate my holdings and invest things as you deem best.  Use it as you need it until every coin is gone...  Take care of them Varric.”  He was aging before my eyes.  I told myself, _there will be all the time in the world to mourn later, so leave it be and do what needs doing._

I gripped Aveline’s vambraces and stood.  “Try to keep my misfits from getting themselves hanged, and… and stand with him if that Tevinter bastard ever shows his face.”  She looked like she was about to haul back and punch my lights out, but at the same time wanted to crush me against her breastplate in a hug.

“Isabella,” tired and full of regrets, I offered the best smile I had left in me.  “I wish things had ended better.   When I teach the Qunari how to play proper card games you will always be close.”

“I do believe I hate you every bit as much as I love you.”  Her voice was strained.

“Yeah,” my ribs expanded in a sigh.  “me too.  If you lose your mind and decide you owe me anything for my interference in your business today…” it was hard to get the last part out, so hard.  “Watch out for him for me ok?”  Her face tightened and I held up one hand to stop her.  “None of it matters anymore.  So just shut up about it and promise me.   If you can help, then help, that’s all.”  We glared at each other, sharing a poisonous cup of jealousy, anger, regret and love together to the dregs.

“Done,” she intoned, a parody of moments before.  The shadow of fear had begun in my heart, and the fury her comment caused stiffened my backbone.  I laughed aloud.  “You are such a bitch,” I said with a fondness I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I felt huge hands clasp my wrists and pull them behind my back.  “Be still,” I hissed at a twitching Aveline.  My warning stilled her.  There really was far too much at stake.  The Qunari column opened a space in the middle and I stepped into the place awaiting me.  As they reformed, I set myself to preparing to relinquish all personal considerations.  To begin the service I had vowed, “Tell them I’m sorry Varric.  It won’t help but tell them anyway.”  I saw nothing past the walls of blue-gray flesh on all sides.  The world narrowed down dark tunnels until I saw only the step before me.  Each one was a battle to stay upright.  _Left, right, left, ri…_


End file.
